Question

I have an array of hashes in ruby that I render with render :json => my_arr. However, in my view, i see it as a string, and when I iterate over it with jQuery.each it comprehends one character at a time instead of one element of the array at a time.

In my controller:

logger.debug(my_arr) # prints [{"foo1"=>"bar1”},{“foo2”=>”bar2”}]
render :json => my_arr

In my view:

function query_facebook_for_roommate(){
    $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        url: "send_to_my_controller",
        success: function(data){
           //I see data: "[{"foo1"=>"bar1”},{“foo2”=>”bar2”}]" in the chrome debugger
           jQuery.each(data, display_result) 
           //This iterates over each character, eg: [, {, " etc. instead of each element {"foo1"=>"bar"}, {"foo2"=>"bar2"} etc.
    });
}

This was working yesterday but for some reason now it’s broken. I checked out previous revisions but they’re broken now too. Any idea on how I should debug this?

Answer 1

Perhaps your return value is not being parsed as JSON. Try this:

success: function(data){
  var parsed_data = $.parseJSON( data );
  jQuery.each( parsed_data, display_result );
}

or try adding the dataType option, set as “json”:

$.ajax({
  ...
  dataType: 'json'
  ...
});